GOD DOES NOT NEED TO BE ENTERTAINED

And neither do we, certainly not when it comes to worshiping God. First, God. God does not need to be praised or even worshipped by us. God does not need anything in the sense that you and I have needs: food, clothing, shelter, love. God has everything because God is everything. To assume or even assert that God needs our praise and our worship is to misunderstand God.

We are the ones who need to worship and praise our God. It comes from our very being as children of God. We have an inborn need to praise and thank our parents for parenting us, for giving themselves to us in love. Even when our parents were not the best of parents – what parent is really “the best” given our innate proclivity to be selfish? – there was and still is a need in us to praise and thank them if, for nothing else, putting up with us when we were so selfish. Over the years on my visitation rounds many an adult has said to me, “I wonder why parents didn’t kill me as a teenager.” Enough said.

In the same way we need to praise and worship and certainly give thanks to God for all God has done and continues to do for us and especially for putting up with us as a loving parent for all the selfish deeds we have committed over the years and still do. What is amazing is that God continues to bless us and forgive us even as we continue in our selfishness even if those selfish actions are, if you will, no big deal in the grand scheme of things in this life. Nevertheless, God’s forgiveness does not seem to prevent us from still needing to ask for that always-granted forgiveness.

That is why worship is to be worship. God does not need to be entertained when we worship and neither do we. That is not to say that worship is to be dull and boring but it is to say that we do not need to feel joyful and uplifted when we worship. It’s like coming to our parents and asking them to forgive us with a smile on our face and asking them to feel good about our transgressions. Worship is not about us. It is about God and God does not expect a smile on our faces as we ask forgiveness.

In worship we are to come to grips with who we are and who God is. God is not our buddy or best friend but a loving parent who wants us to recognize our failings and shortcomings, confess them, understand that we have been forgiven and give thanks for God’s love and forgiveness. Granted, I am an old fogy and love ritual and hate anything that smacks of entertainment; but I stand by my point.

Sometimes we miss the whole point of worship in that, again, it is not about us. It is about God and our relationship with God and how we express that relationship. When our worship is completed, we need to feel that we have indeed worshipped God, worshipped, not entertained God or even been entertained. Somehow our culture seems to have lost that understanding of what the worship of our God is all about. It is not surprising, I suspect, but it is sad.